Just so. That is a home, where five may dwell with ease, Tho’ two would be a crowd, if enemies. That is a home, where all your thoughts play free As boys and girls about their father’s knee, Where speech no sooner touches heart, than tongue Darts back an answering harmony of song; Where you may grow from flax-haired snowy-polled, And not a soul take note that you grow old; Where memories grow fairer as they fade, Like far blue peaks beyond the forest glade. FALK [_with constrained sarcasm_]. Come, you grow warm— STRAWMAN. Where you but jeered and flouted. So utterly unlike God made us two! I’m bare of that he lavished upon you. But I have won the game where you were routed. Seen from the clouds, full many a wayside grain Of truth seems empty chaff and husks. You’d soar To heaven, I scarcely reach the stable door, One bird’s an eagle born— FALK. And one a hen. STRAWMAN. Yes, laugh away, and say it be so, grant I am a hen. There clusters to my cluck A crowd of little chickens,—which you want! And I’ve the hen’s high spirit and her pluck, And for my little ones forget myself. You think me dull, I know it. Possibly You pass a harsher judgment yet, decree Me over covetous of worldly pelf. Good, on that head we will not disagree. [_Seizes FALK’S arm and continues in a low tone but with gathering vehemence._ You’re right, I’m dull and dense and grasping, yes; But grasping for my God-given babes and wife, And dense from struggling blindly for bare life, And dull from sailing seas of loneliness. Just when the pinnace of my youthful dream Into the everlasting deep went down, Another started from the ocean stream Borne with a fair wind onward to life’s crown. For every dream that vanished in the wave, For every buoyant plume that broke asunder, God sent me in return a little Wonder, And gratefully I took the good He gave. For them I strove, for them amassed, annexed,— For them, for them, explained the Holy text; My clustering girls, my garden of delight! On them you’ve poured the venom of your spite! You’ve proved, with all the cunning of the schools, My bliss was but the paradise of fools, That all I took for earnest was a jest;— Now I implore, give me my quiet breast Again, the flawless peace of mind I had— FALK. Prove, in a word, your title to be glad?